Your Week In Film: LEGO, Tron, Pooh, King Kong

1. The Oscars happened

2. Jay Z has his head In the Heights

Lin-Manuel Miranda may not have added the O to his EG_T on the weekend, but the creative polymath did get something from the Oscars. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jay Z will co-produce the film adaptation of Miranda’s first smash musical In the Heights. Harvey Weinstein made the announcement at his pre-Oscars gala on Sunday – to the apparent surprise of already-confirmed producer Scott Sanders. Casting has not yet begun on the project, which follows a particularly musical three days in the largely Dominican-American New York neighbourhood of Washington Heights. But for those worried that the four-time Tony Award winner might be mishandled, the last musical Jay Z produced was Annie and that was… something that happened! So it’s in safe hands, everybody.

3. New Skull Island trailer has beasts, The Animals and an ape

You know that rule that you shouldn’t show the monster? The one that says how tension works best if you show footprints, some trees rustling, maybe the aftermath or a giant footprint? Yeah, nobody told these guys that. In the final trailer for Kong: Skull Island we get a whole lot of ape and a whole lot more aping Vietnam, right down to wonderful inclusion of The Animals’ ‘We Gotta Get Out of This Place’. It all makes for a pretty effective, and entertaining, trailer for the eighth wonder of the world. Handy, considering Skull Island is released worldwide on March 9. Our review is here.

4. The LEGO sequel will have a Spaceship!

On the most recent episode of the Shanlian On Batman podcast, Chris McKay popped by. No real surprise there; McKay recently co-directed The LEGO Batman Movie, and that’s relevant to the podcast title. However, while offering up Bat-nuggets (or “guano”), the writer-director shared some details for the sequel to The LEGO Movie. Though he isn’t directing – that’ll be Trolls’ Mike Mitchell – McKay confessed that it would be “this big musical and space action movie,” suggesting that Charlie Day’s ’80s spaceman might get a chance to shout his catchphrase a few dozen more times. Still, the LEGO sequel remains in development. We’ll have to wait a little longer for the songs and the script to take shape, the latter courtesy of BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg.

5. Did anyone see the movie Tron 3 coming?

If Cinemablend is to be believed, writer-director Joseph Kosinski has himself an almost-finished Tron 3 script. With the caveat that the project has been in “cryogenic freeze” since Disney’s acquisition of Marvel and Lucasfilm, Kosinski confirmed some details in a Collider-hosted IMAX screening. Said Kosinski, “this movie’s called Tron: Ascension, and I think we got the script to… about 80%… probably eight or nine months out.” Tangible plot details are over on Cinemablend, but as it still takes a while to thaw a project from standard cryogenic procedure (and Disney haven’t made any moves on the project) it looks like we’re still a long way from getting our light cycle on again.

6. Show me your War Machine

Brad Pitt is pretty good at war. He’s fought zombies, Nazis and Trojans – winning every time. Kinda. Now though, as General McMahon, Pitt has to fight the Taliban, the press, and general incompetence. War Machine is the adaptation of Michael Hastings’ best-selling novel The Operators, but where that followed around General Stanley A. McChrystal and his team in 2010 while he was responsible for the war in Afghanistan, Pitt’s character is the fictional General Glenn McMahon. According to The Hollywood Reporter, “the project pivoted away from the real-life depiction in an effort to avoid potential legal headaches.” Fair enough.

7. Tom McCarthy bears the weight of Winnie-the-Pooh rewrites

This week, Disney live-action news doesn’t concern Mary Poppins, Mulan or The Little Mermaid. Nor have we got news of Snow White, Cruella De Vil or Dumbo. Nope, this week it’s all about Christopher Robin. The Marc Foster-directed picture that we absolutely hadn’t forgotten about is getting itself a Tom McCarthy rewrite according to The Tracking Board.

The Spotlight, Station Agent and Win Win writer-director has apparently been tapped to punch up Alex Ross Perry’s script about a grownup workaholic Robin who rediscovers Pooh and the chaos that the rotund yellow bear brings with him. Perry was hired to write the screenplay in November, so it’s likely that we’ll get some casting news quicksharp like.

8. Logan: Black and Adamantium Edition in the works

Because that’s what you people want, James Mangold is hard at work on a black and white version of Logan. Despite the fact that Hugh Jackman’s lupine swansong wasn’t, y’know, filmed for grayscale or anything, the director responded to a few inquisitive twitter folk this week with positive news.

Such a move would follow on from the success of George Miller’s “Black and Chrome” edition of Mad Max: Fury Road which was released late last year. Media magnate and famed film colouriser Ted Turner would likely be turning in his grave right now were he actually dead. As it is, he’s probably just a bit peeved.

– SON & DB

Your Week In Film: LEGO, Tron, Pooh, King Kong was last modified: March 3rd, 2017 by Stephen O'Nion